Something From Nothing

Poets like John Wilmot cut their world down to size with wit—then built it up again in art.

The quality of wit, like the Hindu god Shiva, both creates and destroys—sometimes, both at once: The flash of understanding negates a trite or complacent way of thinking, and that stroke of obliteration at the same time creates a new form of insight and a laugh of recognition.

Also like Shiva, wit dances. Leaping gracefully, balancing speed and poise, it can re-embody and refresh old material. Negation itself, for example—verbal play with words like nothing and nobody: In one of the oldest jokes in literature, when the menacing Polyphemus asks Odysseus for his name, Odysseus tricks the monster by giving his name as the Greek equivalent of Nobody.

Another, immensely moving version of that Homeric joke (it may have been old even when Homer used it) is central to the best-known song of the great American comic Bert Williams (1874-1922). You can hear Williams' funny, heart-rending, subtle rendition of the song (music by Williams, lyrics by Alex Rogers) at the University of California's Cylinder Preservation and Digitization site.

The lyricist Rogers, I suspect, was aided by Williams' improvisations as well as his virtuoso delivery. The song's language is sharp and plain. The plainness, an almost throw-away surface, allows Williams to weave the refrain-word "Nobody" into an intricate fabric of jaunty pathos, savage lament, sly endurance—all in three syllables, with the dialect bent and stretched and released:

When life seems full of clouds and rain,And I am full of nothing and pain,Who soothes my thumpin', bumpin' brain?Nobody.

When winter comes with snow and sleet,And me with hunger, and cold feet—Who says, "Here's twenty-five centsGo ahead and get yourself somethin' to eat"?Nobody.

I ain't never done nothin' to Nobody.I ain't never got nothin' from Nobody, no time.And, until I get somethin' from somebody sometime,I'll never do nothin' for Nobody, no time.

In his poem "Upon Nothing," John Wilmot (1647-80), also known as the earl of Rochester, deploys wit as a flashing blade of skepticism, slashing away not only at a variety of human behaviors and beliefs, not only at false authorities and hollow reverences, not only at language, but at knowledge—at thought itself:

"Upon Nothing"

...........................1Nothing, thou elder brother ev'n to Shade Thou hadst a being ere the world was made, And, well fixed, art alone of ending not afraid.

...........................2Ere Time and Place were, Time and Place were not, When primitive Nothing Something straight begot, Then all proceeded from the great united What.

...........................3Something, the general attribute of all, Severed from thee, its sole original, Into thy boundless self must undistinguished fall.

...........................17The great man's gratitude to his best friend, Kings' promises, whores' vows, towards thee they bend, Flow swiftly into thee, and in thee ever end.

Click the arrow on the audio player below to hear Robert Pinsky read "Upon Nothing." You can also download the recording or subscribe to Slate's Poetry Podcast on iTunes.

The inventive triple rhymes give this poem the authority of expertise. The multiple targets, with their wildly varying scale (whores and philosophies, politicians and Creation), give it a manic energy: the sweeping, parched grandeur of its Great Negative. Underlying this restless and skeptical rant is Wilmot's profound pathos—just as, conversely, underlying the pathos of Bert Williams' performance there is, maybe, a philosophical frame of mind.